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Thought I should separate these out from the Bringers of Wonder thread, now that it's a whole (non-chaotic) thing.

Background: so back when Space Marine month on the painting contest was coming up, and I'd decided for want of anything better to do that I'd finally get around to opening up that 'armour through the ages' pack, I was looking through the Book of the Astronomicon and spotted a page of old (well, new at the time) space marines, one of whom had the excellent name 'Brother Lustgarten'. A quick google revealed that he'd also been sold as 'Brother Marine Quiff', as shown here:



So Brother Quiff Lustgarten became my contest entry instead, I'll reminisce a little about him below - and since he was another in a small string of non-chaos marine miniatures I'd painted (the Martyred Order sister for Halloween the previous year, a Bloody Rose sister for a thing the local GW shop was doing, old space pirate Dambo Kweltz, he works for the warband, but he's not part of it and doesn't wear their colours), I came to realise that I could just paint any miniature I wanted. Yeah I know that seems obvious, but I get set in my ways easily (plus, every free mini of the month from the shop, whatever it is, has been converted to chaos, yes even the Tyranids, so you can see how I wound up in an 'everything goes into the warband' mindset). Anyway, I had a look around and assembled various miniatures to paint just for fun, leftovers from days of yore or from kits I'd bought for conversion fodder that still had enough for a complete mini on them, and, with the above image in mind (and because the Lieutenant I'd bought to be Quiff was a lot of fun to assemble and paint) I got a box of Primaris Interociters (for substantially more than two bob fifty for three of them) with a view to recreating more of these old marines, which morphed into a pukka project to finish all twelve (yes, even the Ex-Brother Marine). They're all assembled and in various stages of painting - which'll take a while to finish, since they get set aside whenever there's a contest on, but every time I finish one, he'll show up here.

(I'm still sticking to my rule of converting every free mini of the month to something I can use for chaos though, that's a tradition at this point.)

(Obviously Quiff's done already, but I'll wait a bit to add him here so it doesn't auto-append that post to the end of this one. My sense of order just wants every marine in his own little post...)

Direct links:

Brother Marine Quiff
Battle Brother Dedmole
Brother Longun
Brother Dimshade
Brother A Skull

Lieutenant Tycho
Traitor Castellan-class Robot
Legion of the Damned

Brother Quiff Lustgarten:



I've already rambled on about him in the Bringers of Wonder thread, I'll just recap the salient points for this group project. Probably a major influence on committing to this was how much working with the Lieutenant miniature reminded me of those old 3rd Edition tacticals - after so many monopose, or at least severely limited, marines during 2nd, I remember them being a gigantic breath of fresh air, with all their varying leg and torso and arm and head options, and all the little accessories on the sprue (I recall the auspex was particularly neat, placed in the open right hand, after cutting the left bicep to swivel the bolter out of the way into a one-handed grip). So fine, most of them were still just variations on 'marine holding bolter and looking aggressive', but they really felt like my marines, not just generic marines painted in my colours, and all in all I think they played a big part in getting me invested in 40k so much that, even years later when I was moving house and deciding what to pack and what I couldn't be bothered with, the marines made the trip even though I hadn't thought about the game in years (a lot of other minis left my possession, which I do regret now of course, but bygones). So yeah, Quiff brought those memories back, and from opening up his little plastic box to putting the black on the rim of the base, was just a thoroughly positive hobby experience - so naturally I liked the idea of some more of that. Although it helped that, even in committing to the 'Astronomican collection', they're so individual - I like patiently working on tiny details, but doing it over and over and over again can get tiresome fast (the only reason I haven't lost interest in the Bringers of Wonder, now they're well over 150 minis, is everyone's their own individual kind of freak, even when it's 'another legionary' there's something or other unique to motivate me), so every marine having his own colour scheme (except fellow Crimson Fist Brother Orinoco), particularly those jazzy camo patterns, was a big factor.

Looking specifically at Quiff, he's a bit of an outlier compared to the others I've assembled, in that he strays from his original quite a bit - having just the one Lieutenant mini to work with at the time, I just took 'marine with epic hair' as inspiration and didn't bother with other details much (I did intend for him to have the same weapons loadout though, with one empty hand and one bolter - turns out that's actually a bolt pistol he's holding, I didn't realise that's how big pistols were now, I thought that was a bolter and the bigger one on the sprue was one of those new super bolt rifles or whatever they have now), whereas for the others, when I had all the parts of a ten-man Primaris box to work with, I'd try to get closer to the original sculpts where possible, as well as the paint jobs.

(Also turns out I've been spelling it wrong this whole time, it's 'Astronomican', not '-con'. So does that mean the half of the galaxy shrouded in darkness behind the Great Rift is Astronomican't? ...I'll show myself out.)

Amazing model!

There's no denying it, that is indeed amazing hair.

Thanks folks

Next up, Battle Brother Dedmole



Also sold as ‘Brother Taylor’ - I don’t know how they differentiate between ‘brothers’ and ‘battle brothers’ and ‘brother marines’, maybe it’s just how much space they need to fill on any given page. There were couple of variations I felt I needed to introduce to ‘space marine with bolter’ when I was putting him together - firstly the non-standard backpack, which a website I found looking for pictures (Rogue Heresy) identified as part of a prototype metal multi-part marine GW tried out but never put into production during the early days of Rogue Trader. I clipped off the tips of Necron gauss guns to recreate the truncated vents - the original metal backpack has larger conical vents lower down, where modern ones have those four little square vents, but I didn’t have any pieces that leapt out as me as suitable for those, and since they’re invisible from the front of the mini anyway, I decided not to bother. Secondly, although the Primaris mini as a whole doesn’t have the forward lean of the original, I glued the helmet on dipped forward as far as I could to recreate some of it - the neck ball’s not actually sitting in its socket so as to get the chin right down against the collar, but enough plastic cement makes a strong join out of anything.

The obvious novelty of customising the backpack was what led me to getting Dedmole assembled first of all the post-Quiff marines, but the wild colour scheme is the reason he got painted first - aside from a couple of Imperial Fists trophy helmets on spikes, and one Lamenter (half of one anyway, his armour part-way through morphing into the Bringers’ white and gold), I’ve never done much yellow, and the garish camo pattern just seemed cool; besides, for a number of these I’d need to be copying camo on the front them continuing it round the back without a visual to follow, so I wanted to see what that was like. In hindsight I feel like I should’ve gone both darker on the shadows and paler on the highlights on the yellow, but I can live with how it is. Can’t make out what chapter he’s supposed to be from in the original, with his shoulder side-on to the camera, but based on the chapter icons displayed in the Book of the Astronomicon two-page spread I decided he’s a Flesh Tearer - red and yellow also lines up with the Blood Drinkers, but Captain Lowbroe’s clearly got a Blood Drinkers icon on his shoulder, so I went with Flesh Tearers for variety. (Of course Dedmole could just as well be from a chapter with a completely different colour scheme, because camo patterns with no relation to a chapter’s default colours happened all the time in Rogue Trader - for that matter the Flesh Tearers colours shown in Rogue Trader’s gallery are black, with just a yellow stripe on the helmet - but never mind, I just like having some reason for things, even if it’s not a solid one.) The weird markings on the armour were also a staple of Rogue Trader that I wanted to try out as soon as I could - the 2 and G on the legs were easy enough to copy (no idea what they’re for, mind you), but I couldn’t make out enough of the writing on the shoulder to work out what it says, so I just went with ‘death’, because that’s always a safe bet. Since the chapter icon got moved to the left shoulder (to have more room for it), the right was looking a little bare, so I looked up the Flesh Tearers’ other markings and added a black blood drop as his company marking.

These boys have also been serving as a playground for different types of bases, since I’m normally just doing the same glittery purple on everything - nothing eye-catching on this one, just a rough brown surface, which could probably have used a skull or a rock or something to liven it up, but I’m mainly just playing with the texture paints without overcomplicating things.

The prototype backpack was well-spotted! I never noticed that.

This is a very fun project!

The symbols look good.

Thanks again folks Last one for now, all my attention currently's going to Lieutenant Tycho for this month's contest - although he's also a Rogue Trader repaint, so he'll join this gallery in time, and there are plenty of other old paint jobs and colour schemes I'd like to take a crack at, so this won't be limited to just the twelve on that one page. But for now:

Brother Longun



Also sold as ‘Brother Anderton’, someone was reading The Minority Report I guess. The ‘long gun’ on the original mini was actually a heavy bolter, but I didn’t have one of those (do they even exist for Primaris?), and in any case the modern heavy bolter’s more chunky than long, so I decided to be literal (and comical) and just glued two boltguns together, taking the front one from the leftover from Brother Quiff’s lieutenant sprue, which is held one-handed so there’s no left hand around the forward grip - cut it as clean as I could, but my eyes are old so it’s not perfect, I slapped a purity seal on to hide the join. The pouch on the leg is actually a callback to my own early days, when a friend and I had an RTB01 set and put together various marines from it - since the legs were the largest flattish surface to stick stuff to, we tended to put pouches and holsters there.

He’s pretty clearly a Silver Skull - I found it a bit difficult to make out the colours on the original photo, which parts were different shades of silver and which were just different lights bouncing off it, so for my Brother Longun I kept it simple, with an all-over mid-silver, and just a black stripe down the face for variety. I found the monochrome look quite striking so I kept at it, with grey pouches and holster rather than brown, and a grey rough concrete look on the base - that marking on it was inspired by the ‘XI’ on the landing pad of the old Imperial Firebase cardstock terrain set, although it’s not an exact match for the font, and I decided not to try to add the top of the ‘I’ since it’d be partially under the foot, and I liked how the base looked already and didn’t want to mess with it further. Moving the chapter icon to the left shoulder gave me more room on the right, which I needed since I can’t paint text as small as GW’s folks could - I did a thick (ish) grey outline first, so the black ‘kick ass’ would stand out more against the silver (speaking of painting tiny text, I did technically try to paint 'longun' on the scroll on the front of the bolter, but what it is is a few black spots, so don't strain your eyes trying to see it). The right shoulder still looked a bit bare though, and since the original has some kind of yellow badge I copied that, using it for the squad type markings (which means Tactical, not ‘Battleline’, I will die on this hill) - which did dilute the monochrome look a bit, I was originally thinking the blue eye lenses would be the only colour on him, but besides the shoulder the gun would’ve looked plain without the seal and scope lenses, so I’m not bothered by straying from that idea a bit.

(And because I don't like to take 40k seriously, my headcanon is he's not a marksman, he just needs the scope to be able to see the iron sights on the front of his gun.)

very cool stuff so far. lol kick ass love it.

Thanks I do love the old 'war punk' aesthetic Rogue Trader had going - I'm hoping to fit the classic "KIL KIL KIL" onto a shoulder pad on one I'm working on currently.

Not one of the OG twelve, but here's Lieutenant Tycho in his all-new all-anachronistic Primaris armour:



...based on a combination of the old Rogue Trader Blood Angels RTB01 'commander':



...and classic Tycho, here in the 2nd edition Codex Angels of Death:



Not an exact match for either, of course - if anything the RT boy ought to be Dante (unless we just dismiss him being 'commander' because that's just what the bare head was called on the sprue, not necessarily meant to be the Commander of the entire chapter) but it felt a bit weird imagning him going from a power-fist-wielding foot slogger to bouncing around with a jump pack. Making him Tycho means ignoring the white hair and bionic eye of course (is there any art of Tycho pre-half-mask? Technically there could be a bioeye behind the mask I guess, but it seems like it wouldn't fit his whole 'look at my face I'm so damn pretty' thing before being tragically messed up by that Weirdboy) but we're also ignoring how he's now somehow in Primaris armour before he became a Captain, and it's all just for fun anyway, so whatever. Mainly it was just an excuse to try a full-body NMM paint job.

I gather the important thing with NMM is to plan out where the 'reflections' are going to be so it all makes sense visually, and naturally I didn't do that, just winged it - I did try to make note of where the light was bouncing off the mini just after I'd slopped on the Agrax Earthshade (over a dark yellow-orange contrast paint), but mainly it was guesswork, and in a few spots like the left keepad and the helmet going back and repainting the highlights until they 'looked right'. Ideally I probably shouldn't have started with contrast and ink, since that put its own shadows where I didn't necessarily want them, but three-quarters of the mini is just basic highlighting along the edges anyway, and besides I need to start with contrast paint, because up until that point I can't really make out all the sculpted detail anyway. The mini itself is primarily the Lieutenant With Power Sword, but with the power fist from the Lieutenant (Not With Power Sword) I used as the basis for Brother Quiff, and a random head I assume just came from the Intercessor box. The banner pole's an old 2nd edition one I pulled out of my bits box - I'd used to put little Epic-scale minis on top of them as decoration, so that got clipped off, and (even though mere sergeants get banner icons) I liked the idea of Tycho having a less ornamented banner pole than when he was a Captain, so I left it bare; probably should've done some filing to smooth out the top, but I forgot to do that before I sprayed on the undercoat, so never mind.

I wasn't 100% sure about the red chest wings, but I wanted to carry over some red on the torso, as well as the belt buckle, from the RTB01 version's red cable tie - the original Tycho mini (the 'generic' Blood Angels captain, named Tycho in WD139, who'd be used in the studio army for the battle report where he got Mind War'd and subsequently got his own sculpt reflecting that) had a red wing as decoration on his bolter. Following that I decided on white for the wreaths and sunbursts, to bring in some of the white that'd normally be on the winged blood drop symbol, and because I was worried adding green would make him a bit too Christmassy. I feel like those other two banners on the Codex Angels of Death page are supposed to be for other company captains, but I decided (just for variety's sake) to use the one with a vertical stripe and pretend that's the banner Tycho wore as a Lieutenant, and when he got his Captain's stripes he decided to redo his banner as well; I did carry over the diagonal red stripe on his pistol though, as the 2nd ed mini has on his rifle - let's say he asked the company armourer to jazz his pistol up a bit, and after using it a while got really attached to the stripe and made it his personal thing. Since I'd used a right shoulder without a sculpted nameplate, and didn't want to just freehand one on, I ditched that shoulder's canon design entirely and used part of the third banner - three rows of checks rather than four though, that's as much as I could fit into that space. Meanwhile the Blood Angels logo on his left shoulder was copied from the RTB01 version - I mucked that up a bit, puttng the central blood drop off-centre by accident, so the right side wing ended up squished, but the left faces the front of the mini and turned out pretty well so I left it alone rather than painting over and starting again.

I tried to be a bit more detailed than usual with the face (since I didn't have a choice) - as well as a little black ink in his mouth and eyes to highlight them, I put a little touch above the eyebrows, to try to give them a little definition without having to actually try painting on eyebrows. I used dark blue in the eyes, to try to get a bit of colour without having to do an even more tiny dot of black to darken the centre - left eye turned out well, the right is actually a bit wonky (I'm right-handed, so my brush comes in more naturally working on the left side of faces) but like the shoulder logo, it's not the most prominent side so never mind. Every time I have to do this it reminds me how convenient it is that Syl forces her edge-to-edge green eyes onto everyone in her warband though.

The banner's a print, but painted over on everything except the small details like the skull and hand/chalice - I can't be bothered stuffing around trying to glue a banner together so I printed it at work on adhesive-backed synthetic (I work at a print shop, it's convenient at times like this), and left the backing on the straps so they wouldn't stick to the pole. The adhesive poly has a pretty flat matt finish though, hence the repainting - it's also quite springy, so the banner's actually whacking Tycho in the back of the head. Maybe that's what really sent him round the twist into the Death Company, and they just blamed the Mind War episode to spare the company banner-maker's feelings.

I always loved that Rogue Trader marine, painted by Aly Morrison IIRC. He was called "Lt. Commander Chavez" in the Citadel Combat Cards game, but I like the Tycho connection you've drawn here.

 Pariah Press wrote:
I always loved that Rogue Trader marine, painted by Aly Morrison IIRC. He was called "Lt. Commander Chavez" in the Citadel Combat Cards game, but I like the Tycho connection you've drawn here.

Glad you mentioned Combat Cards, I vaguely remember I used to have the Chaos pack, but it hadn't occurred to me to look them up for more Rogue Trader paint jobs. Now you've reminded me, I've downloaded a bunch of images off Lexicanum to add to the inspiration stack - Father Ruben the chaplain and Brother Janner with his shuriken catapult are definitely first in line next time I'm assembling more minis for this project.

Wish I'd known ahead of time, I'd have scrounged up a bio-eye head from somewhere and made that miniature Chavez - still, the paint job would've been pretty much exactly the same, so I haven't really missed out on anything hobbywise. Maybe Chavez got his eye fixed up and some colour back in his hair while being Primarised, and now he carries Tycho's old pistol because, well I was going to say 'honouring a fallen comrade' but my imagination being what it is my headcanon for those two is totally tragically unfulfilled romance now.

Great stuff.

Wow!
New skool Tycho is a nice homage, but in dress uniform!
Great thread.

Thanks folks Also not one of the old marines, but definitely old nonetheless - a Traitor Castellan from 1989's Warhammer 40,000 Compendium:





It didn't actually occur to me until a couple of days ago that this should be considered part of this little Rogue Trader collection I'm doing, since it's also part of my chaos warband - hence the modifications, adding the 'skirt' (from a Terminator Lord) mainly because most chaos miniatures already have loincloths of various kinds so I didn't see anywhere else I'd use the part otherwise, and moving the flamer from the backpack mount to the fist and adding a second one, since if I play it it'll be a twin-fist twin-flamer Helbrute. But the colour scheme's all old school - I thought at one point about maybe having the central chestplate, or maybe a shoulder, in the Bringers of Wonder's smoky white to show it's part of them, but decided to stick with the original and just have the Slaanesh symbol (spare from the Keeper of Secrets) in the Bringers' usual crimson gold. I did get to be a bit different with the 'face' though, since the blank blue of the original (and the blank metal of the new look) are kind of dull - I kept the blue colour, but used it as if it's a screen and tried to recreate the symbol from the banner on the Compendium page. I'd actually had the 'screen face' idea before I thought of the banner, with the idea to maybe do a daemonette face, or (this is a real obscure one) the screaming face of the god of destruction Bash from an old puzzle book called Helmquest, where he's likewise depicted as a face on a screen (a giant screen though) - pretty cool art in that book, I've been meaning to use something from it sooner or later, but I decided the robot faceplate was too small for anything that ambitious so it'll have to wait for now.

The Necron triarch (I think?) I got from a random issue of Warhammer Imperium - mostly I avoided the Necron issues when I saw leftovers at the newsagent, but that one had the entire full-size triarch sprue in the one magazine, not split across two, so that $20 bought a whole lot of parts to use as debris on bases; I've got a jump pack chaos lord unpainted at the moment, leaping off the tip of one of the legs buried upside-down in the ground. Having the Castellan with its foot up on the Necron meant filing the pegs off the ankle and hip balls of both legs, leaving them free-floating joints, which made it quite an experience getting everything in the right place to glue - I ended up holding everything together to see roughly where the feet would end up, then gluing the back foot to the base (still with the ankle free to move), then once that was set holding it all together again to see where the front foot ended up, then sticking that down, and finally holding the legs onto the central hip piece and gluing it together, and then finally getting around to attaching the upper body and arms. The whole robot ended up fairly far back on the base, which I hadn't intended, but positioning the Necron over to one side of the base (so I only had to worry about one set of limbs) meant the upside-down gun mount, where the foot goes, just naturally ended up in the midpoint of the base from front to back, and the robot ended up entirely behind it. It's also got the undamaged back leg sticking up behind the robot - you can actually see the very tip of it peeking around the corner of the backpack, behind the head - which would've got in the way if the robot were just walking forward - I did try some poses with the torso to suggest it was actually all up on top of the Necron and stepped its left leg sideways to aim at something in that direction, but pivoting the body left meant not only was it way back on the base, but it wasn't even looking across the base's centreline anymore, which just looked weird. Never mind though, I think it came out pretty cool, and that's all that matters.

Loving these. Keep it up!

Thanks

Just finished another one - Brother Dimshade:



aka 'Brother Thaw' in a later release, the reference (I assume it's a reference) escapes me. I felt the important points for this boy were the chainsword and the visor. It's pretty difficult to see on the catalogue page but newer hi-res photos of the sculpt show he's also got a couple of doodads on top of his head, which resemble the stickies Librarians wear as part of their psychic hood gear, but unless there's a 'librarian with visor' head out there I don't know about that would've needed conversion with very small parts, so I decided the visor was enough - nothing like that in the Intercessor box so I put out a call to my local gaming group to see if anyone had a spare visored Scout head, and ended up getting a donation from our Black Templars player of a neophyte with the appropriate headgear. Dimshade's original chainsword has a chunky chainsaw-style body with a two-handed grip, but since I didn't have the parts to recreate that I decided just a regular chainsword would do - it's the regular Intercessors I have, not the assault ones, but I had an old 3rd edition chainsword in my bits box. That left me free to use the grenade hand, which I wanted to just because it's a cool part.

The camo was fun to paint, and I think worked out better than Brother Dedmole, since it's too thin to really need highlighting where it crosses a panel edge. The original has light green hands as well as pouches (I think thighs too), but I decided to transfer most of the light green to the chest eagle, to make it stand out nice and bold but also be part of the original colour scheme; pouches as well, but I think the hands and thighs in addition to the chest would've been too much. The red-lined version of the Black Templar symbol came from 3rd edition Codex Armageddon which shows off a few variants - I made a bit of a mess of the red at the top of the cross, but even though I'm prett sure I've got Templar transfers somewhere I find it much more satisfying to freehand symbols on these minis, regardless of the mess I occasionally make.

The base is another random experimentation with technical paint and colours I don't normally get to use - I like how the dark green armour stands against the Martian plains look of the ground, which to my mind is much more important than how it means the camouflage pattern is completely wrong for the terrain he's in. Mind you the Rogue Trader version's got his jungle camo on a generic rocky terrain surface, so it's not doing any better. I don't know Black Templars lore very well, but I feel like maybe they're not the camouflage type, so maybe they don't entirely understand how it's supposed to work - while I was painting I started imagining a backstory for Dimshade where he's from a Templars detachment stuck on some endless crusade for decades, they saw Imperial Guard using camouflage effectively so decided to try it, but nobody told them it's supposed to be based on the environment (kind of like Ork Blood Axes, where they wear camo because they're 'proper military', but make it really bright and eye-catching because they want their enemies to know who's charging them).

These are awesome, love love love seeing the old school paint jobs!

Lots of character in these. Well done.

Thanks folks

Another one for the collection - a Legion of the Damned marine:





There ended up being a fair bit of Sergeant Centurius, from 1996's White Dwarf 195, but that wasn't wholly intentional - he's more intended to be a mashup of visual cues to the original Legion of the Damned article from 1988's WD99, which makes him proper Rogue Trader in my eyes. Plus the flames are brightest at the bottom, which is how the Rogue Trader boys painted their armour, but for some reason later on (when Centurius and the subsequent boxed set squad were released) the Eavy Metal team seemed to think the flames should be red at the bottom and yellow at the tips.

The Primaris Chaplain was a pretty obvious starting point, with the ribcage decoration already built in. I considered using the standard head, with its hood and skull mask, but I felt a bare head moved the mini a little further away from its Chaplain origins, and also gave the opportunity to attempt trimming the nose a bit to give him a ghoulish look, which I did with a mind to echoing WD99's art of a legionary with his helmet off. That guy's actually got his entire nose, but he's got life support tubes going into it, pallid skin, infected pustules on his bare scalp, one eye swollen shut, and a metal clamp around his forehead apparently holding his skull together, all that's too fine-detail for me to attempt, but the ghoul nose I could do on an otherwise stock bare head from the Interociter sprue, and that got me to 'cadaverous marine' which was good enough; that it's quite similar to Centurius's face is a bonus. I changed up some of the Pandora charms he's got - the holy symbol thing hanging in front got replaced by a skull face, which I got by very carefully slicing the face off one of the skulls from the skull accessory box (got it off cleanly first try, which I was far from certain I'd manage, but there are so many generic human skulls I'd have had plenty more chances to get it right), while the book I replaced with one of the generic marine reliquaries - partly again to make him less Chaplainy, but I was mainly thinking that I don't have any spare books in my bits box after using what I had for Balefire Tomes (just to have a couple, not because they're particularly good) and Chaos Icons, so I'm sure I'll one day find a better use for it than sitting on a Legion of the Damned's hip. I left the decision about what to do with the Crozius until last, and that's when I was specifically thinking of Centurius and his Animus Malorum - although I didn't actually look up a photo of his old miniature before I got converting, so the arm I ended up making, from leftover Intercessor parts and another generic skull, is much more thrusting it forwards than brandishing it up in the air; since the hand's the one meant to be just giving a tactical wave he's not really gripping the skull at all (I did momentarily contemplate softening the fingers and thumbs with cement and trying to bend them in tighter, but decided not to risk messing up the good-enough conversion I'd done, since I don't have a whole lot of other loyalist marine arms and hands to spare), it kind of looks like it's hovering in his palm, but that's fine, he can have a magic skull. Also clipped off the vents on his backpack and replaced them with larger skulls, which isn't a reference to any specific miniature, although skull-vents were used back when they did a Legion of the Damned boxed set, along with decorative ribcages serving as the 'casing' for boltguns, which was one reason I didn't replace his bolter (or pistol or whatever it is, bolt pistols seem huge nowadays) with a chainsword, alongside convenience. The tactical rock on the base is from the Possessed set, where it's an alternate piece for the one with its foot up on the chest of a downed marine, if you didn't want the downed marine - just had to clip off a couple of claw toes and it was good to go, and gave this guy a bit of a forward tilt that I like the effect of, like he's marching purposefully forwards (although it did also mean his front foot only had the toe touching the base, so I built up the ground beneath the heel with lumps of technical paint).

Originally I intended to divide the decorations up, with the armour being all bones (including the finger and toe bones painted onto the gauntlets and boots, I love those), and the flames only on the coat - I'd meant to fill the blank shoulder pad with one of the icons shown in the WD99 art, most likely the side-on skull with flames coming out its nose because it's funny, but the large skull on the side of the backpack ended up being in the way of where I'd have needed to be moving my brush to attempt something like that, so I gave him just flames on the shoulder instead, plus on the circular panel on the backpack just to stop it being bare, and cover up a bit of that washed-out look contrast black does on large smooth surfaces. The flame pattern also comes from WD99, where it's used on a shoulder pad (along with the 'born to die' slogan, which turned out to be useful in filling up those ribbon things) with the repeated two-spike flames, which I combined with a design I found while googline that has those bright central strands of yellow flame against the orange/red 'sea' at the base - it looks kind of like something you'd find on the side of a Pimp My Ride van, but that kind of punky flashiness is part of the Rogue Trader look for me. Incidentally this is a rare case of my using a black basecoat, since it'd have been impossible to cleanly paint the legs and underside of the skirt any other way - I did start from my usual wraithbone spray, just because that's the only spray I have, but then I just slathered contrast black over the entire miniature except for the head and Animus Malorum. I did briefly consider trying to paint in the Legion's motto 'in dedicato imperatum ultra articulo mortis' (which is supposed to mean 'For the Emperor beyond the point of death', but is actually 'an order in the dedicated one beyond for the moment of death' which got me imagining the 'Romanes Eunt Domus' scene from Life of Brian), since when I'd done the first red coat for the flames I felt like there'd be enough spare to paint it on in black, but the more I built the flames up the more it seemed like lettering would be obscuring the detail of the yellow licks of flame near the bottom, so I left well enough alone.

Very, very nice! Loving the old 'mottos' all over the models.

 Shakalooloo wrote:
Very, very nice! Loving the old 'mottos' all over the models.

Thanks I love the mottos - lettering that small is where my brushwork gets decidedly shaky, if we're being honest that 'born to die' on the Legion mini is far and away the weakest element so far as quality of painting goes, but I'd rather have wonky writing than none. It's not in my current batch (once these are done I'll get a second box of marines and just keep going) but I have one piece of artwork in my to-do stack of a marine with the delightfully derpy-macho motto 'the one big one' on his armour, which I'm really looking forward to.

Anyway, onwards. Finished up another one recently, the imaginatively-named Brother A Skull:



also sold as Brother Dixon (probably for Colin Dixon, who did illustration and mini painting for Rogue Trader), and I kind of assume a proto-chaplain; at any rate I put some extra religious bling on him, you can just see a little bit of blue near his right elbow that's one of those holy water vials hanging off his shoulder pad, and on his backpack I put one of the little reliquaries with a couple of bones in it. So this guy's a weird one, with his half-camouflage design and skull face - I did the latter by carefully slicing the face off a suitable bonce from the skull sprues (Ork I think, but it serves well enough as 'generic stylised angry skull') and likewise slicing the front of a marine helmet flat. Could've put some milliput to fill in the join on the forehead, but I don't like sculpting much to begin with and breaking out the putty for such a tiny job feels wasteful (I need to try some of that liquid green stuff, see if it's any good) - regardless I think the join actually turned out pretty neat, the gap's thin enough that I find it looks like a seam in the helmet rather than just two bits of model stuck together. No particular reason for using the reloading arms, I just think they're a fun variation, and the original mini's pose is generic anyway so it doesn't matter - the magazine slot in the bottom of the bolter was flat originally but I did a little drilling and gouging to make it hollow for a millimetre or two, it's pretty rough work but painted black I think it looks okay.

The camo pattern was fun, I think the colours matched well to the original photo this time, but the left arm was a bit confusing. It looks darker on the orginal but I think that's just because it has contrast in the crevices around the tactical bumps, while the right is smooth - but then again, it's bone-coloured all the way down the arm, whereas on the right the arm is black like the body. I decided to give the left arm, which started with the same bone colour as the rest, a couple of goes with the agrax earthshade to darken it down and make it actually a different shade to the other bone pieces - my thought was that perhaps this chap's unit has been cut off from resupply for a while, and after taking damage in his suit's arm the techmarine grafted on the arm from a dead marine of a different chapter (not sure what chapter that might have been though, there don't seem to be many brown space marines). All together the weird colouration had me put aside the almost-done mini for several weeks, while I tried to decide what chapter to make him - I can't see any hint of a logo on as much of the right shoulder as is visible in the photo, so I went looking for other sources, and found a piece of artwork with a marine whose helmet looks similar, whose body is red with dark blue camo lines; he's alongside another marine in yellow covered with red zig-zags, and behind them is another in all blue, so I think the artist was just winging it. But I did also find a photo of the Brother A Skull miniature from Rogue Trader (or some book from the same era, I forget) where he's been converted (with a big spike sticking out of his shoulder) and painted as a Dark Angel - all black as Dark Angels were back then, and I decided to take my lead from that, and paint him as an Angel of Vengeance, the Dark Angel successor chapter that still uses black armour. The squad number and knee stripe came from the sample Angels of Vengeance marine in the 3rd edition Codex Dark Angels supplement.

I wasn't impressed at all with Liquid Green Stuff. I don't know if it's just crappy or if I got a bad batch. However, I have been quite pleased with a product called "Mr. Dissolved Putty," Works a treat for filling in little seams.

I converted and painted up some of those "One Big One" renegades from the Rogue Trader rulebook. They're a bit rougher, but I f feel like they'd be right at home with your Boys from the Astronomican.